Malta has a strong plastic manufacturing industry that employs thousands of people and makes a significant contribution to the Maltese economy. To remain and enhance its competitiveness, the plastic manufacturing firms require a constant investment in innovative material, product, and process development. This can only be achieved through excellent education, training, and lifelong learning in polymer engineering. For that reason, Polymer Engineering Research Unit (PERU) at the Department of Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering at University of Malta was formed in 2010. Its mission is to conduct research and development in polymer manufacturing including its process and products’ quality control as well as its sustainability aspects; also, to transfer knowledge via formal student teaching both in class and during lab sessions as well as direct dissemination of the research project results e.g. through under- and postgraduate students’ projects, bilateral projects, and externally funded research projects.

The Polymer Engineering Lab is currently equipped with a multi-functional thermoforming machine and a 2-component micro injection moulding machine as well as several filament FDM 3D printers. In terms of testing or quality control, the Polymer Engineering Lab currently hosts a dynamic mechanical analyser (DMA), a differential scanning calorimeter (DSC), a reflection and transmission light microscope.

The equipment in the Polymer Engineering Lab is be used to support the research and development activities in polymer engineering, also in a close cooperation with local industry, to be able to contribute in one of Malta’s smart specialisation areas, namely high value-added manufacturing. However, sustainability aspects (economy, environment and social) are themes which cannot be neglected in plastic manufacturing industry. For instance, the members of the Polymer Engineering Lab are the principal investigators of an MCST TDP project VacuUM and a TRAKE project CONFORM in which an equipment or tool is developed to make injection moulding process in industry more energy efficient even with a significant improvement of the products’ quality.